


london calling

by maraudersmoons



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: British, British Comedy, M/M, TTOI, Thanks, brain rot, legally you cannot laugh at this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28741170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersmoons/pseuds/maraudersmoons
Relationships: Adam Kenyon/Fergus Williams
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	london calling

Two gangly politicians stood huddled outside of Harris Westminster Sixth Form College; each men’s eyes directed down at their phones.

“What time are the BBC arriving?” The shorter, curly haired man asked his advisor, his eyes now darting up and down the road, pacing impatiently.

“What?” Adam Kenyon looked up from his email inbox briefly, “Oh, bit after nine, so anytime now. You did read over your statement, didn’t you?” he enquired.

“Yeah, yeah, just more bullshit about how _bloody lucky_ they are to get the improvement fund. Still don’t understand how this has got anything to do with us.”

“People want to see our involvement in the public-image of politics. And by that, they mean a distraction from the House of Lords reform bill cock up.” Adam’s phone rang for a second before he hastily picked it up irritably, “Where are you? Right, yep I see you now, thanks.”

“BBC”, he muttered to Fergus, “They’re here now,” he began walking towards the taxi that had just pulled up, outstretching his hand to shake the film crew, “Fucking finally.” He murmured under his breath.

“Hello, you must be Colin Dunthorne”, Fergus forced a smile, shaking the sweaty hand of the standard-issue BBC journalist, in all his Pret-A-Manger and M&S suit set glory. Sometimes he wondered how they did it; the constant hand shaking, fake smiling, presenting a calm, if not nauseatingly boring, exterior, “I’m Fergus Williams."

“Adam Kenyon.”

“Minister of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship. This is my-”

“Special Advisor.” Adam finished Fergus’ sentence with a curt nod.

“So,” the cameraman began, clapping his hands together, “Will we do the statement now or after?”

*****

“I cannot believe you just agreed to giving them more money. We are so fucked, you realise that?” Adam whispered harshly, not looking at Fergus the pair walked towards the taxi waiting for them on Tothill Street.

“Look, they mentioned the lack of science resources, I mean what was I supposed to do? It was like dangling a carrot in front of a fucking paralysed pig.”

Adam held the door open for Fergus, shooting him a disgusted look as he climbed into the backwards facing seat.

“Can you drop us off at St Stephen’s Tavern mate, didn’t go quite as well as anticipated.” Fergus asked the driver with an awkward note in his voice.

The pair sat opposite each other, trying to catch their breath whilst refreshing their Twitter timelines to evaluate any developing political disaster.

Adam looked up from his phone, “If I text Terri, she can fucking get us out of it out and rule it all as a misunderstanding. Maybe earn her inflated wages for once in her menopausal life. Or the more likely outcome, she fucks up so disastrously that our involvement is forgotten about.” he threw his hands up, exasperated, “I mean for fuck’s sake, you can’t really get blamed for this, the only time you visit a sixth form is if you are the Prime Minister trying to defend some austerity-inducing fucked up scheme, or you are a politician so low on the hierarchal ladder, that you are willing to lose all self-respect just to reappear on some inconsequential town’s local newspaper.”

Fergus sat back in his seat, letting Adam rant about ‘fucking tories’ and ‘prepubescent phil’, zoning out at he stared idly at his friend’s face.

“This is the problem, isn’t it?”, Adam stated looking directly at Fergus, bringing him back to his senses, “The students had no problem ploughing into us about the whole tuition fee thing, did they?”

“Mate, I know, I wasn’t even in fucking government and you were sleeping with anyone that walked if it meant you got a story; have a go at Nick ‘Vote for students’ Clegg, but I had as much power as a fucking hotel shower.” Fergus finished.

Adam smirked appreciatively, recalling his days as a scummy journalist, despite Fergus only asking him to be his Special Advisor a little more than a year ago. The pair had drunkenly met as students at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, bonding over their shared hatred for an act who had quite clearly watched too much _Monty Python_ growing up; Adam at Edinburgh uni and Fergus at Oxford. For reasons unbeknownst to Adam, they had remained close over the years. ‘Look, it’s had a good run’, Fergus reasoned in an attempt to get him to leave his job, ‘But this is its zenith. Do you really want to be the one supplying the Viagra in fruitless attempts to get it up?’ God, Fergus’ mind was a cesspit of filth. He did sometimes miss being the morally decrepit shit-stirrer rather than the morally decrepit politician getting ripped into, but at least now he could tell his parents that all those thousands spent on his education had not been wasted.

Adam compared journalism to floating downstream in a very fast river. Everything was fine so long as you were in the centre of the current, but every so often a rock or something will knock you off course, causing you to end up on the shores, or, as Adam called it, the ‘All Quiet on the Night Shift’ stage. Because this is when you have to confront your morals and you realise that you’re turning into one of those journalists you swore you’d never let yourself become, with all morals out of the door just to stay afloat. Fergus, in this analogy, was Adam’s rock.

“Here’s great, thanks.” Fergus called, interrupting Adam’s thoughts, handing the driver a small wad of cash. Junior though they may be, being spotted walking into the pub at 3pm on a Tuesday wasn’t exactly the image they were aiming for, and so they walked down the back alleys of London, climbing up the three flights of stairs.

Fergus’s phone rang, breaking the conversation apart. ‘Fucking Terri’ he groaned, disgust clear upon his face.

Adams’ eyes rolled back into his skull as Terri’s shrill voice could be heard coming from Fergus’s phone.

“Calm down, it’s only one school, look we can just do an under-the-table transaction, keep it all hush hush. It’s your fault for letting us go there, I couldn’t just say no to them. Just don’t let the bloody BBC run with it. Say Phil doesn’t do his taxes or something, I don’t care.” Fergus retorted, stomping angrily across the pub to their usual table.

“Now what would have happened if the master had said yes to little Oliver Twist asking for some more? Well, we wouldn’t have the musical, that’s for starters.” Terri reasoned.

Fergus put down the phone for a second to look up at Adam, who was wearing an equally appalled face.

“I pity you if that’s your attempt at comedy. Can’t you just do this one fucking thing?” Fergus spat out in reply, which earned him a mouthful and a half in response. “Fuck you, Terri”, he spat out feebly, hanging up on the civil servant angrily, “She’s a joke. She said when I get back, she’s planning on stringing my balls up on her washing line.”

“Now surely that’s in violation of the Geneva Conventions?” Adam quipped, a shadow of a smirk showing on his face.

“Right,” Fergus began, slamming his hand onto the table, “She said that it’s really not her job to do anything. Look, can you stay here and sort that,” he gesticulated wildly towards his phone, “I’ll go and get drinks so we can hide out here for the afternoon. I’m not going back to that hellhole today.” He walked back across the carpeted floor. He always questioned the sanity of whoever decided that those dated red monstrosities belonged on a pub floor, no matter how ‘quintessentially British’ they may be. It just wasn’t practical to have carpet in the same space as drunks.

“Two gin and tonics, mate. And, umm, two vodka cranberries. Cheers” He added.

The barman looked him up and down before turning around to prepare the drinks. No matter how old he was, Fergus would always feel like his sixteen-year-old self with a fake ID acting as though he often frequented pubs.

He carried the drinks back to their booth, still inwardly complaining about the pubs interior design choices.

“Well next time, Terri, _you_ can trot on down to a college, big up this amazing new Condition Improvement Fund while both you and the entire school know that it’s comparable to mopping up the Thames with a blue paper towel.” Adam growled down the phone.

Although Fergus knew Adam was quite pathetic really, sometimes flashes of an outsider’s perspective entered his mind and he really was quite glad that he was friends with him and not on the receiving end of his petty abuse. He supposed you had to learn empty threats rather quickly in low-level British journalism.

As Fergus lowered himself into his chair, Adam hung up the phone and took a sip of the blood red drink. “Christ, this tastes like university. Sorry, forgot you Oxbridge dons ingest only the finest scotch made of preserved piss from Churchill himself.”

“Oh, shut up Mr fucking _Common People_.”

“Jesus, don’t say that.” Adam laughed, resting his hand on Fergus’ arm, before awkwardly drawing it back to rub his neck.

“Anyway,” Fergus added, ignoring the tension, “If I’m _Common People_ , you’re _Charmless Man.”_

The pair sat like that for hours, their conversations becoming less filtered as the alcohol entered their bloodstream.

“Oh my God, Adam. What if this is enough to get me banished to the fucking forgotten lands.”

Adam raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“Northern Ireland.” Fergus deadpanned, making Adam snort into his drink.

“Nah,” Adam rubbed his face wearily, “Politicians fuck up every hour of every day. Hell, there’s probably someone shagging someone they definitely shouldn’t right or ‘accidentally’ doing their invoicing wrong right now and we are unaware. Politics is just a game of trying to fuck up the least and trying to smooth it all over to present a ‘hey, everything’s fine’ image to the public.”

Fergus nodded, briefly consoled, letting the silence hang between them before he worked up the courage to ask, “Do you ever get lonely?”

Adam stared at his friend peculiarly before breaking out into a grin, “Christ mate, I think you need to be one of those people who shag someone they shouldn’t. Right, I’m going for a fag, and not just because they’re playing fucking Queen.” Adam stretched his body out, rolling down his sleeves to put his blazer on, “Back in a minute.”

Fergus spent about ten minutes mindlessly arguing on Twitter before he realised that Adam must have run into someone he knew and wasn’t coming back for a while. Prick, leaving him there like a fucking lemming. He decided to go to the bathroom himself, downing the last of his drink and flashing a tight-lipped smile at the waitress. He descended the stairs still talking to himself about the dementia statistics in the Maidenhead area that he had to summarise. He vaguely became aware of two bodies that were pressed against each other, arms groping everywhere. Christ, it was like walking through the Student’s Union on a Friday night. These two were definitely too old to get away with that kind of behaviour, Fergus thought. He approached them cautiously, like one would a tracksuit-wearing chain-smoking teenager outside of a corner shop, before the familiar grey pinstripe suit registered in his mind.

Fergus stared at the pair like a child who has just found milk teeth in their parents’ drawer before he pulled himself together, colour flooding to his face. He backed out of the corridor, completely fucking mortified, taking the wooden stairs two at a time. He wasn’t even sure where he was going but decided outside would be best. The idea that Adam had a life outside of the prison-like constraints of Westminster had never occurred to Fergus, but he wasn’t sure he liked it too much.

He pushed open the obnoxiously heavy doors, staring up at the night sky in hazy confusion. How long had he been inside for? It took a while for Fergus to realise that he was annoyed. Not that he had any right to be, he supposed, but the feeling surprised him, nonetheless.

The doors opened abruptly, expelling from them a stumbling Adam.

“You pulled.” Fergus spoke out, leaning against the wall.

Adan clumsily spun around in the direction of his friend’s voice. “Oh good, there you are. Yeah, you saw? she just kind of came onto me and who am I to say no?” Adam grinned lazily.

Fergus laughed hollowly, staring at the ground. “Well, listen mate, I am not prepared to be a fucking cockblock tonight, so I’m just going to head back to my flat.”

“Wait, no, I’m just going to have a fag and we can get the tube back together,” Adam slurred as he searched his blazer for his pack, pulling out two Benson and Hedges gold, “Can I borrow your lighter?” he beamed as he stumbled towards Fergus, who took the cigarette gingerly.

Adam held the cigarette between his lips as he in leaned towards Fergus to light it, not breaking eye contact as the other man fumbled around flicking the lighter on. Adam’s pupils were dilated from the night, staring into Fergus’ own blue ones as though seeking something.

Adam stepped forward, gripped by a sudden desire to _do_ something, pressing his lips and body desperately against Fergus’, his hands gripping the other man’s hair gently. They had, incidentally, kissed before, albeit drunk on new years’. It was a sloppy and wet thing, in which Adam’s tongue was pushed down Fergus’s throat in a very non-sexual way that sparked memories of year 8 and bus depots. This was different. Adam was actually fucking kissing him, and oh god they should not be doing this, they were friends, they played fucking squash together, but it just felt so good. Months, years even, of repressed feelings, lingering touches, passing comments communicated in this one moment.

It lasted only seconds before the weight of the situation hit Fergus, who pushed his hands onto Adam’s chest to stop their entanglement. “We ca-” Fergus started,

“I’m not gay, like. Just, so you know-” Adam interrupted hurriedly, turning on his heel away from Fergus.

Fergus threw his hands up in the air, sighing, “Look, that’s fine, mate.”

Adam clenched his jaw as he scuffed his polished shoes by kicking the pub wall. “Channel 4 are doing re-reruns of Tarantino’s movies, we could, uh, watch them. Back at yours.” Adam muttered, rubbing his neck.

Fergus snorted in response. Adam smiled down at him with embarrassment, and other unguessed emotions. The two men walked off towards the nearest tube station, neither saying anything but hiding their growing smirks from each other.


End file.
